


Grandmother

by WhyWhyNot



Series: we all carry our deaths inside of us [1]
Category: Daredevil (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Blood and Gore, Child Abandonment, Gen, Minor Character Death, POV Outsider
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-27
Updated: 2019-12-20
Packaged: 2019-12-25 06:23:14
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 1,988
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18255545
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WhyWhyNot/pseuds/WhyWhyNot
Summary: Most of those who know Matthew agree to say something iswrongwith the boy.It doesn't get better when he gets older.





	1. California Right

**Author's Note:**

> I am not really happy with this chapter but I have to post it at some point, so hereit is

Callie doesn't know why her client ordered a hit on 'Battling' Jack Murdock and, frankly, she doesn't care. 

Well. The hit isn't exactly on Battling Jack, but he's still the intended target. 

Maggie Murdock, visibly close to her term, is sitting on a bench by the church, and is surprisingly easy to approach. Callie, Bart in tow, just has to pretend that they're a nice couple, that they just got _wonderful_ news, and the two women have a long conversation about morning sickness and baby names. 

The harder part is keeping a facade of enthusiastic cheerfulness all along. This is so _boring_.

When Maggie gasps in pain in the middle of a sentence, Callie feels like Christmas came three months early. 

Thank fuck for contractions.

It takes a bit more time to convince her to let them take her to the hospital, but the promise of a car finally get through her.

Bart takes the wheel, and Callie sits with Maggie in the backseat.

(Oh fuck. Did her water just broke in Callie's car?! _Disgusting._ )

As soon as the car goes through a Dark alley, she slits Maggie's throat. 

Bart stops the car.

"Fuck! Fuck, Callie, what did you _do_?"

She stares at him in incomprehension. 

"Our job? We were supposed to kill her?  
\- She was _giving birth_! You could have waited until the baby was born!"

He takes a deep breath and gets in the back of the car.

"Give me the knife. She was giving birth, maybe the baby has a chance if we get it out before he suffocates."

Callie watches with vague disinterest as Bart butchers through Maggie's lower abdomen, and frowns in annoyance at the stench coming from her open bowels. Well, it's not like they intend to keep the car.

Bart finally gets the baby out. It's a wrinkled, bloody, wailing thing, but it's very much alive.

Bart writes 'Matthew' on its arm with a ballpoint pen.

"Why 'Matthew'?  
\- She said she would call it that if it was a boy."

Maybe. She wasn't paying attention to the conversation beyond automatic answers and faking enthusiasm.

"Callie, drop the baby at the hospital. Somewhere he will be found. I'll take care of the body."

The baby is heavy in her arms. Heavy and loud and sticky with blood. 

She waits until the car is out of sight to drop it in a dumpster. 

\---

Callie has to give that to Bart, though. 

Letting on Battling Jack's doorstep the skewered body of his pregnant wife was beautifully efficient.


	2. Timothy Thane

Matty was a noisy baby. 

Tim remembers, after they brought him home from the orphanage, how he kept crying and crying and _crying_.

(He didn't regret it, despite sleepless nights after sleepless nights, too enthralled with the joy of a second child.)

(He didn't understand how anyone could throw a baby away with the trash.)

Matt was a noisy baby and a fussy toddler, always protesting that sheets were scratchy and cars were louds and people were smelly and food tasted too strong and lights were too bright. He was tempted to accomodate him, at first, but Lesly convinced him that there was no need to pamper him. He needed to live in the real world.

(He did get the right to wear sunglasses inside, though, when a school medical visit revealed his light sensitivity.)

Matty was a noisy baby and a fussy toddler, and then he grew up and as a child, he was _strange_.

He _knew_. He always _knew_.

(What kind of child always, _always_ know when people lie?)

He tried. Oh God, did he try.

("Dad, dad, Miss Marshall has a tiny person in her belly!""Tim, how did he know? I didn't even tell my boyfriend yet!" And Tim didn't have the answer.)

("Matty, what are you doing with this bandaid?""It's for Jordan, dad. She fell and skinned her knee." And that was true, but Jordan only came home fifteen minutes later.)

("What are you doing, Matty?""A cake for Miss Curtis. She leaves tuesday.""What? No, she doesn't!""Yes. She leaves with Grandmother on tuesday. And she won't come back." And Miss Curtis died the following tuesday.)

' _Grandmother_ '.

Matty is obsessed with ' _Grandmother_ '. One day, Tim asked him to draw her.

It's an old woman, frail and tall, skin drawn too tight over her bones. 

It's a teenager, standing with arrogance, an eye where her mouth should be.

It's a young woman, a baby in her arms, uterus and bowels falling from her open belly.

It's a girl, half skeleton half child, white flowers growing between her ribs.

It's a boy, smiling defiantly, eyes stitched shut and broken bones instead of teeth. 

It's a deer, taller than the mountains before it, deformed fingers for antlers. 

It's a bird, half vulture half magpie, feathers dissolving into smoke. 

It's a swarm of butterfly, wings the bright blue of a clear sky, maws and jaws and sharp needle-teeth where there should be a trump and devouring a man alive. 

It's a shark, big black empty eyes, with shards of glass instead of teeth and far too big a mouth.

It's a fantastic beast, tiger and wolf and bright-eyed fox, six-legged with too many joints. 

It's an old apple tree, with fruits ripe and fruits rotten, spider lilies growing at its foot. 

It's a pool, filled with eyes floating in smoke and black ink.

Black ice, glimpses of shapeless monsters underneath.

A sea of burning blood. 

The drawings are all different and all equally _wrong_ , and Matty says they're all _Grandmother_.

Tim doesn't know what to do.

He's worried about his son.


	3. Lesly Thane

Lesly knows something is _wrong_ with Matthew. 

_Wrong_. Not 'strange'. _Wrong_.

(It's not only the things Tim told her.)

(It's not only how he see through lies, not only the impossible knowledge.)

(It's not only the eyes of a child who can't bear the sight of light.)

It's the first time she went in his room at night and noticed he wasn't breathing. The slow realisation that his heart stops every time he falls asleep, and starts again when he wakes up.

It's the time the cat was hit by a car, and when Matthew took him in his arms, the fur grew back and the flesh and bones mended themselves. 

(It's the woman next door, finding her cat dead on her kitchen floor, looking as if it had been hit by a car.)

It's whatever happened, this day in the park, that made Jordan look at her brother with horror in her eyes. 

Something is _wrong_ with Matthew. 

She tries, though. She really, really tries, to pretend it's alright, to treat Matthew the same way as Jordan, to love the boy she calls her son.

And then Tim _dies_.

Tim dies, and she remembers how Matthew predicted Miss Curtis's death. 

(Matthew knows when people will die.)

(Matthew knew Tim was going to die, and did _nothing_ to stop it.)

Tim dies, and she remembers how the cat should be dead but isn't, remembers the whispers about whatever happened in the park. 

(Matthew is _wrong_ , fae-touched and changeling.)

(Whatever Matthew is, it is no _human child_ , and whatever Matthew is, it can _bring the dead back_.)

(Whatever he is, Matthew can bring Tim back.)

And if he refuses to, Lesly will _make him_.


	4. Chapter 4

Jordan has a brother, and his name is Matthew, but calling him Tiny is funnier, because he's _small_.

Jordan loves Tiny, with his sarcasm and dry humour, with his strange, impossible knowledge, with the way he just said _okay_ and looked up neutral pronouns when ey told him _Tiny, I'm not a girl, but I don't feel like I'm a boy_.

Kids at school _don't_ like Matt, torn between fearing him

( _it's like he has eyes behind the head_ and _he knows things_ and _light hurts him, like a vampire_ )

and making fun

( _he's weird_ and _he's fussy_ and _he has stupid glasses_ ).

Jordan is more than happy to punch the latters in the face.

(Tiny is eir _little brother_.)

That's how It happens. 

_Stupid_ Leon Kenwood and his cronies, like Jordan, nine years old to Tiny's seven, and they're _jerks_ , always pushing and mocking him.

They're in the park, and Jordan and Tiny are on the wood castle, and Leon and cronies come throwing insults from the ground. Jordan throws insults right back, and Leon gets pissed off. He grabs her ankle, and _pulls_.

Jordan's neck hit the edge of the castle on her way down, and there's _pain_ , and then _darkness_.

\---

Ey wakes up no two minutes later, and Tiny is standing over em, fists tight and red hair sticking up, like horns, like a crown of thorns or a halo.

And then ey sits up, and the cronies are looking at Tiny with fear and horror on their face, and

Leon is lying on the ground, his head tilted at a _wrong_ angle. 

(Eir neck doesn't hurt. Eir neck doesn't hurt _at all_.)

Ey feels bile in eir throat when ey _understands_.

Ey was dead, ey thinks. Ey was dead, and ey was brought back, and now Leon is dead.

It's Tiny, ey thinks. Ey was dead, and Tiny brought em back, and now Leon is dead.

(Tiny killed Leon.)

\---

Dad dies nine months later. Jordan is ten, now, and Tiny is eight.

(Tiny who brought em back. _Tiny who killed Leon_.)

Dad dies, and Mom asks Tiny to bring him back.

(Tiny who killed Leon. Tiny who brought em back.)

"I can't." Says Tiny. 

(Tiny who killed Leon. _Tiny who brought em back_.)

"I can't." Lies Tiny.

(Why is he lying? Why isn't he bringing Dad back?)

Mom is angry. Angrier than Jordan ever saw her. She drags Tiny in the kitchen, and she close the door, and Jordan can't see what's going on inside. 

\---

_momnoicantpleasemomstopithurts_

Tiby is screaming, and ey wants to plug eir ears, ey wants to _stop hearing_.

_pleasestopimsorryicantmompleasestopimsorryicant_

(Why doesn't he just do what Mom asks? Why doesn't he just _bring Dad back_?)

_mommompleasemompleasemomicant_

Ey thinks ey can smell burning meat, but that's ridiculous, why would Mom be _cooking_?

_pleasepleasestopmompleasestopiccantpleasemomstop_

And suddenly, like some kind of biblical angel, Marie from 5B, who babysit them and Tommy next door, comes in, opens the kitchen's door, and maces Mom in the face.

(Tiny is still screaming, but there aren't any words now, just inarticulate sounds of pain and fear.)

Marie called the police before she came, and they came quickly for once, and they tell em not to look, and take em away. 

(Tiny isn't even crying anymore, just letting out choking, broken sobs.)

But ey saw. Ey saw, before they took em away, how knives nailed Tiny's hands to the wall, how his eyes where red and hurt, ey smelt the stench of _burned meat_.

(Ey heard Tiny screaming, and stood idle behind the door as their mother tortured him.)

There are two silver coins on the kitchen floor, the kind Dad used to collect, and when Jordan goes to pick them up, they burn eir fingers. 

(What did Mom do?)

Ey clutches the coins in eir fist, and ignores the pain.

\---

The last time Jordan sees eir brother before social services take them apart, gauze covers his eyes and the doctors say he will never see again. 

(Ey heard Tiny screaming, and stood idle behind the door as their mother tortured him.)

Jordan doesn't know what to say, so ey drop the coins on Tiny's lap.

(He looks especially small, lost in the hospital bed.)

Tiny picks up the coins, and rubs his fingers against the flats.

"They, uh, they were in the kitchen."

Tiny's voice is strangely detached when he answers.

"I know. Mom heated them in the frying pan and put them on my eyes. It's why I'm blind."

Jordan stops talking after that, and they stay silent until the social worker comes take em away. 

Tiny keeps the coins.


	5. Chapter 5

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I found this on ebay


End file.
